Elizabeth Warren gets publisher for book proposal

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WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren has found a publisher two months after she began shopping her book proposal.

Henry Holt and Co., one of the nation’s oldest publishers, said it had obtained the rights to publish the book, which it characterized as telling both “Senator Warren’s improbable rise from a working class family in Oklahoma to the United States Senate,” as well as providing “a rousing call for protecting the middle class.”

The book will be published in the spring of 2014 and will be edited by John Sterling, who is editor at large for Macmillan, of which Henry Holt is part.

Neither the publisher nor Warren’s office would reveal how much of an advance Warren was paid.

A press release from the publisher noted that a portion of the Massachusetts Democrat’s net proceeds would be donated to OneFund Boston.

The Globe reported in March that Warren was starting to shop the book, which had a working title of “Rigged” and would provide a firsthand account of her battles in Washington to rein in predatory lending and Wall Street excess.

The former Harvard law professor has written nine previous books, including two national bestsellers.

Warren was represented by Washington attorney Robert Barnett, who also negotiated a book deal for former senator Scott Brown, the Republican defeated by Warren in November’s election, as well as deals for President Obama and former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Warren will need to file details about the deal with the Senate Ethics Committee.

Seeking second chance, Weiner enters mayoral race

NEW YORK — Anthony D. Weiner, once a star of New York politics whose career cratered over revelations of his sexually explicit life online, announced an improbable bid Wednesday for the job he has long coveted: mayor.

After a rocky reemergence into public life over the past few weeks,
Weiner opted to declare his candidacy from the safe remove of a video.

The two-minute video was posted online overnight, apparently prematurely, and then announced by Weiner in a 5 a.m. e-mail. It makes an oblique and glancing reference to the scandal that prompted him to resign from Congress; Weiner asks voters for “a second chance” but does not apologize for his conduct.

“Look, I made some big mistakes, and I know I let a lot of people down,” he says. “But I’ve also learned some tough lessons.”

Opening with soft piano music and footage of Weiner and his wife at home feeding their newborn son, the video suggests Weiner is a changed man, now busy raising a family. It quickly pivots to show Weiner expressing concern about affordable housing, education, and public safety.

His candidacy, fueled by a $5 million war chest and a determination to resurrect his public standing, promises to disrupt a wide-open Democratic primary race populated by several lesser-known candidates.

But it comes with heavy baggage, starting with the deep ambivalence of voters to whom Weiner lied two years ago, when he indignantly, and falsely, denied that he had sent an Internet image of himself in his underwear to a college student in Seattle.

Weiner, 48, eventually admitted to a secret practice of befriending young female admirers over the Internet and then engaging in intimate ­sexual banter with them, sometimes sending them lewd self-portraits taken with his BlackBerry.

House moves to protect Capitol budget amid cuts

WASHINGTON — House lawmakers are moving to protect Capitol Hill’s budget even as they’re working to slash other programs such as education, health research, water projects, and housing aid for the poor.

The effort by the House Appropriations Committee promises a small budget increase for legislative branch operations. Funding for labor, health, and education programs would absorb an almost 20 percent cut. Federal firefighting efforts also face big cuts, as do transportation and community development grants.

The GOP-controlled panel is giving Congress a budgetary reprieve after three consecutive years of cutting Capitol Hill’s operating budget.

The House budget has dropped by 15 percent to $1.2 billion over that time from the record levels established when Democrats controlled Congress.

An Appropriations panel spokeswoman said the reason for the slight budget increase include greater police costs and security upgrades for the House’s oldest office building.

At issue are the 12 annual spending bills setting agency operating budgets for the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1. This so-called discretionary spending has been squeezed since Republicans took back the House in 2011 and is bearing the brunt of automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that took effect in March.

The total budget for Congress is about $4 billion. The 435-member House has a slightly larger budget than the 100-member Senate, and the two chambers share costs like the Library of Congress and the US Capitol Police.

The move is preliminary and came on an Appropriations panel vote on Tuesday in which it allocated $967 billion to the 12 annual bills. Specifics won’t be available until later this spring when detailed legislation is released.